Future Changes (Suggestions Welcome) 2024-25 Edition

[ModeratorMike]

It's that time of the year that I start looking ahead, thinking about what to change/add before next year and, as always, your input is highly encouraged. This site is for the fans, coaches and players, and I want it to always work in a way that is easiest for y'all to find all of the information that you're looking for and that you have a fun way to discuss six-man football and all the teams that play this game we all love.

So, before you guys disappear into off-season, please let me know if y'all have any suggestions for next year.

Here's a list of things that I already have on my list (in no particular order):

• Embeddable scores. I actually got this idea from the Texas 1a Fan website, and thought it was a really neat idea, and maybe something that other folks could be looking for. Next year (or hopefully within the next several months) we'll have code that anyone can embed into their own website, that will allow them to display all of the scores that we have available to us during the current week. Members will be able to display scores from a single team, district (or districts), league (or leagues), or just list all six-man scores. Of course, in exchange for being able to display these scores directly on your site, with a simple line of code, there will be a link back to this site also displayed in the block.
• Separate rankings for playoff teams. This has actually been on my list for the last few years but I just haven't found the time to work out what needs to happen to make this work. Hopefully something I can finally get done this year, but with everything else I've got on my mind, it's not looking too good.
• Team rosters. This is something that's been suggested many times before and, originally, I didn't like the idea because of the amount of work it would take to keep it up-to-date. I've since (possibly) changed my thought process to such that it doesn't really hurt anything if it's not up-to-date for some teams, as long as we're culling out players as they graduate (this could be an automated process). Then, at worse, we're showing a few players who may have moved schools or who no longer play football. So, yeah, this is something that I could see being added before next season. Hopefully we'll be able to get some fans/coaches/players to help us out in keeping all the rosters up-to-date. More details will come out on how this will work as the coding process starts.
• Better favorite teams. Right now you can select a single team as your favorite team, to get notifications when their score is accepted as final, quicker access to their schedule and overview pages, etc. I'd like to expand on this, allowing members to "favorite" multiple teams and having a full landing page to quickly find out some basic info about the teams in your list.
• Playoff bracket challenges. I still haven't looked into this to determine how I want it to look, or work, but I'm thinking next year I'd like to have some brackets here on the site that folks can fill out. Thanks to @Bulldog5255 and @gameofsix for taking on that task this year. I thought it was a fun thing to do for some folks.
• Pick 'em changes. I'm still not 100% sure what I want to do here, but I definitely want to make a change. I don't think 30 games was too many, but I think also having to pick a spread for all of those games made it a bit too much. I'm thinking next year I may try to separate things by division, then only have 1-2 games where a predicted score is picked as the tie-breaker. Like I said, I'm not 100% sure. Mostly just putting this here as a reference because it's my current plan, which is still likely to change at any moment.

So, that's it so far. I'm sure I'm forgetting some things, and I'm sure more will be added as more suggestions come in. As always, I'll try to keep this list up-to-date and try to keep folks in the loop when new features are knocked off the list.

 

[SimplyPut]

Mike,
I confess I am the one that made the comment that picking 30 games is a little much. To be honest it wasn't really too many, I was attempting to be politically correct and say that I didn't enjoy picking the private school leagues. Just don't care much about those games therefore don't really commit to following them, thus making it hard to make picks. Separated by divisions as you mentioned would be awesome. Totally up to you sir but you asked for input so that's my take on the pick em'. The idea of team rosters would be absolutely awesome. I agree it would be hard and need lots of assistance keeping them as accurate as possible. But if a data base was ever built that stayed fairly accurate with Senior losses, move ins, coaching changes, etc. it may very well create a more accurate pre-season ranking baseline which is huge as the season progresses from what I can tell. I believe even late in the season there were a handful of teams either substantially over ranked or under ranked and I think it had to do with preseason (baseline) ranking. But I admit I don't know that for sure but seems to be the case. Thanks for everything you do. Still so thankful you brought this site back, it means a lot to a has been like me that loves Texas 6-man football and just a little too far away to make a lot of games.

 

[ModeratorMike]

Mike,
I confess I am the one that made the comment that picking 30 games is a little much. To be honest it wasn't really too many, I was attempting to be politically correct and say that I didn't enjoy picking the private school leagues. Just don't care much about those games therefore don't really commit to following them, thus making it hard to make picks. Separated by divisions as you mentioned would be awesome. Totally up to you sir but you asked for input so that's my take on the pick em'. The idea of team rosters would be absolutely awesome. I agree it would be hard and need lots of assistance keeping them as accurate as possible. But if a data base was ever built that stayed fairly accurate with Senior losses, move ins, coaching changes, etc. it may very well create a more accurate pre-season ranking baseline which is huge as the season progresses from what I can tell. I believe even late in the season there were a handful of teams either substantially over ranked or under ranked and I think it had to do with preseason (baseline) ranking. But I admit I don't know that for sure but seems to be the case. Thanks for everything you do. Still so thankful you brought this site back, it means a lot to a has been like me that loves Texas 6-man football and just a little too far away to make a lot of games.

I do think it's a good idea. I realize not everyone wants to pick every game, so I'm going to work on a way to have it so that members can just pick whichever games they want (probably out of let's say a max of 10 games per division) and we'll have different scoring for overall, UIL, TAPPS, TAIAO, TCAL, TCAF, etc. Again, it's all pretty much up in the air right now but I'll work something out. The main thing is I don't want folks to be required to pick a spread for every single game. To me, that was probably the most daunting part of it and I really don't think it was necessary for breaking ties.

I did get some tips from @6manfanNate on how to handle pre-season rankings, so I'll be utilizing his tips this season to see if that helps. That said, yes, it would be very informative if we had rosters for every team, or at least most teams, so we could easily see who the seniors are each season. If we could eventually have collective stat data, even better, but I have a feeling we're at least a few years out from that, mainly because we don't have a way to input and/or store that data right now.

Baby steps and, God willing, I'll keep adding more and more every year until there's not a single bit of information about six-man football, and the teams that play it, that can't be found right here on these pages.

 

[6manfanNate]

Love the idea for changes to the picking of games each week. Breaking it up into separate divisions seems pretty smart and might get more people involved. I also don’t know the private schools very well and hesitate to pick schools that I don’t know much about. As always another great year, Mike.